Dose of crystals could make Moon base self-sufficient

When NASA sets up its permanent base on the moon, how will the colonists keep themselves going? How will they get oxygen to breathe, and where will they find building materials, not to mention silicon for all the solar panels they will need?

Easy, says Geoffrey Landis of NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio. All these materials can be made from moon dust.

Oxygen, building materials and silicon can all be made from moon dust

Landis’s plan is to use just one chemical shipped from Earth – potassium fluoride, in crystal form – to extract a range of useful materials from the …